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A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

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Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Feb 3, 2020 at 9:45 AM, finished with 82 posts and 15 votes.
  • [X] Goldfish
    [X] Plan Intel-gathering Mk II
    -[X] While our Companions grab our newest prisoners and their gear, bloodwish a Remove Curse and have a Companion cast Panacea on the Shugenja. Leave him with a Sending Stone and Teleport Charm so that he can regroup with Pol Ning.
    -[X] Return to Sorcerer's Deep, interrogate one of our newest prisoners in the Divination-proofed room of the Shadow Tower by incapacitating him, crushing his Will save with Greater Bestow Curse, and then using Brain Spider on him, but only after making certain he has no hidden kill switches or other hidden effects which might render his mind and memories unviable, or worse, allow him to kill himself. If he does have these countermeasures and we cannot disable them, use Scribe's Binding on him instead. Keep the Staff of Power and all of the twin mages' gear and other possessions in the room until it can be identified and cleared of Arcane Marks, Dragoneye Runes, curses, etc.
    -[X] Primary interrogation questions:
    --[X] We want the full details of the current scheme they were involved in at Trader Town.
    --[X] Who/what were the priority targets?
    --[X] What contacts within Trader Town do they have?
    --[X] What assets within Trader Town do they have which are still hidden?
    --[X] What other schemes are active/inactive that they are aware of?
    --[X] Rinse and repeat the above for the rest of the world, get all info on the Golden Company's schemes that they know of. What are their goals, who helps them, who opposes them, etc?
    --[X] We want intel on the Shadow Fortress, what guardians are currently in there, etc.
    --[X] We want intel on the Dragons that Tiamat has lurking in the shadows -- how many are they aware of, how powerful are they?
    --[X] We want intel on any "special surprises" that F!Aegon has for us (like reserved summons, traps for high level casters, bombs, etc).
    --[X] We want intel on the various places that casters might flee to among the Golden Company if the main camp and the Shadow Fortress are compromised.
    --[X] We want intel on the Shadow Plane, their friends and enemies, who they buy their equipment from, etc.
    -[X] After the interrogation, unless there are immediately pressing matters, Viserys will use the magic bedroll to recover his expended spell slots.
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Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Feb 3, 2020 at 9:45 AM, finished with 82 posts and 15 votes.
  • [X] Goldfish
    [X] Plan Intel-gathering Mk II
    -[X] While our Companions grab our newest prisoners and their gear, bloodwish a Remove Curse and have a Companion cast Panacea on the Shugenja. Leave him with a Sending Stone and Teleport Charm so that he can regroup with Pol Ning.
    -[X] Return to Sorcerer's Deep, interrogate one of our newest prisoners in the Divination-proofed room of the Shadow Tower by incapacitating him, crushing his Will save with Greater Bestow Curse, and then using Brain Spider on him, but only after making certain he has no hidden kill switches or other hidden effects which might render his mind and memories unviable, or worse, allow him to kill himself. If he does have these countermeasures and we cannot disable them, use Scribe's Binding on him instead. Keep the Staff of Power and all of the twin mages' gear and other possessions in the room until it can be identified and cleared of Arcane Marks, Dragoneye Runes, curses, etc.
    -[X] Primary interrogation questions:
    --[X] We want the full details of the current scheme they were involved in at Trader Town.
    --[X] Who/what were the priority targets?
    --[X] What contacts within Trader Town do they have?
    --[X] What assets within Trader Town do they have which are still hidden?
    --[X] What other schemes are active/inactive that they are aware of?
    --[X] Rinse and repeat the above for the rest of the world, get all info on the Golden Company's schemes that they know of. What are their goals, who helps them, who opposes them, etc?
    --[X] We want intel on the Shadow Fortress, what guardians are currently in there, etc.
    --[X] We want intel on the Dragons that Tiamat has lurking in the shadows -- how many are they aware of, how powerful are they?
    --[X] We want intel on any "special surprises" that F!Aegon has for us (like reserved summons, traps for high level casters, bombs, etc).
    --[X] We want intel on the various places that casters might flee to among the Golden Company if the main camp and the Shadow Fortress are compromised.
    --[X] We want intel on the Shadow Plane, their friends and enemies, who they buy their equipment from, etc.
    -[X] After the interrogation, unless there are immediately pressing matters, Viserys will use the magic bedroll to recover his expended spell slots.
Click to expand...
 
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Part MMMCCCXXVII: Of Pride and Princes
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    • Of Pride and Princes ​

    Thirteenth Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC

    You do not have much time, but enough for a few spells. Between your own magic and Tyene you are thankfully able to restore the shugenja's faculties, though the man is still understandably confused when you press a sending stone and a genie token in his hands without any word save how to activate them. He might actually believe Pol Ning is conspiring with the Azure throne, you realize belatedly. "Not all is as it seems, ask her of the one who first brought news of the scourge of Tiamat," you say in parting. Hopefully the intrigues of Trader Town will settle by the time you return from Sorcerer's Deep, but you doubt it. After all, you are not exactly going home for a pleasant cup of tea.

    ***​

    You lay down the book that had begun the day as a man and briefly been a puddle of water on the desk with a loud thump. What a quite literally unholy mess. If you had never come across that spell of transmutation in the Opaline Vault you would likely never have managed to extract as much as you did out of Raerys. He had no fewer than three contingencies for killing himself and one for possessing anyone attempting to invade his mind, not that the latter would have done much good against you.

    "It looks like our guess was right in the particulars, they were after Pol Ning. Their ideal outcome would have been to capture Pol Ning, they had two glamoured spies next to her when they arranged the meeting and the false vision, unfortunately they were not so foolish as to count upon that ideal," you recount grimly. "As the imposters were posing as high ranking members of Pol Qo's court, one of them his boyhood mentor, Yu Tang, their deaths would also serve as a means of incriminating Ning."

    "But she only knocked them out," Rina says worriedly. "Surely when the general's guards find them in such a state and try to interrogate them some kind of inconsistency will come to light. Especially with the little fire spirit having warned him."

    "One would hope so, but our enemies were canner than simply assuming they would get all that they desired, or that the princess would kill someone she knew her brother would morn and wish to avenge," you sigh. "Their flesh-smith had made false bodies of the the two in question which were then preserved and shrunk by magic. They were to be left at the scene of the supposed crime for investigators to find in addition to other compromising evidence planted in her room, letters supposedly to the Azure Emperor, one's style of calligraphy is easy enough to forge with magic."

    "So it becomes a question of if the impostors managed to wake before they were found..." Dany muses.

    "Wait, if they had the general's former mentor replaced with an imposter why didn't the Golden Company use that vector to manipulate him?" Dany asks, frowning at the book.

    "The imposters were both oni, they did not dare show themselves openly to the shugenja for too long least the kami sense their taint," you answer. "To tell the truth I worry more about some of the speculation our 'friend' Raerys had been musing over. He believed that the Lady Xue might have taken the chance to purge the court of the princess' influence even if she discovers that it is a plot."

    "Kill her anyway, play along with fiends and traitors?" Waymar asks aghast, though not disbelieving as he may once have been. He has seen enough of the games of court and kingship to understand the danger.

    "I doubt she would go that far, but attempt to banish Ning? Humble her? I could see that if the insights herein are to be trusted..." you tap the book meaningfully.

    "And given what we have seen of Ning she'll take to humbling about as well as a fire takes to someone trying to put it out with a pot of oil," Tyene says grimly.

    "Should we intervene though, can we without showing our hand to the Golden Company?" Dany asks reluctantly. Judging from Ser Richard's disgusted grunt at the whole business it is easy to guess what he thinks of such intrigues.

    Still, if you are going to act you must do so soon, every moment spent reading this particular book is one more in which the situation in Trader Town could change dramatically.

    What do you do?

    [] Return to Trader Town
    -[] In an attempt to keep the situation stable (write in)
    -[] In order to find the flesh-smith (write in)

    [] Continue with the interrogation

    [] Write in

    OOC: And here we go, back to reasonably sized updates and political intrigues.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Artemis1992 said:
    How quickly do we want to act against the Golds here?

    Because this whole intrigue might be completly meaningless if we go fast enough.
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    It will take at least a day to move all combat assets into position, and we aren't assured of a timeline/schedule of our targets yet so we have to make sure they will be in position to be attacked when we mean to do so. There are also lots of moving parts besides just who is teleporting or sneaking in where, we also have to move the Worm from another location.
     
    If y'all don't wanna bother with overcomplicated intrigue outside of the GC attack, we could just offer Pol Ning and her people asylum. Half of us wanted to skip to that anyway.

    To whit, we can shelter them all through to the end of the attack, though we'd have to act quickly to get them under wards.
     
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    Crake said:
    If y'all don't wanna bother with overcomplicated intrigue outside of the GC attack, we could just offer Pol Ning and her people asylum. Half of us wanted to skip to that anyway.

    To whit, we can shelter them all through to the end of the attack, though we'd have to act quickly to get them under wards.
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    I mean, the point of this is not to harm Pol Ning, for the GC. They don't care about her directly I think?

    It is to use the current chaos to attack the Orange Emperor. Is that correct?

    Because if so, the loss of their Volantine Sorcerers will make them act soon anyway, regardless of what happens to Pol Ning.
     
    Who else could read that 'book' and who would be able to act - especially if a Kami were to bring it?
     
    I'm not sure how deeply we should get involved trying to stabilize the Orange Emperor's rule.

    If we move against the GC quickly enough, we would mostly do that by default anyway, at least in the short term.

    By waiting too long, we run the risk of letting the GC attack Trader Town, which is bad because it will scatter their troops and mages all throughout the city, when it's much better for our purposes if they're mostly concentrated in their camp for easy eradication.

    I think we should begin preparations to move against the GC, including recalling Companions, readying the Worm, etc.
     
    Haven't we already blown our cover, in a way? We took out those two Volantine mages when there's basically no way in hell the Orange Emperor could have, since his people are not anywhere near competent enough. Of course those two have mind blank so it'll take people a while to realize they are missing but the second they miss an appointment it'll get blamed on us.

    So yes, get ready to attack ASAP.
     
    This mess is in fact very much not our problem in any way. DP is baiting us with "help the nice woman you helped before", but now it's just an unnecessary risk.
     
    TalonofAnathrax said:
    This mess is in fact very much not our problem in any way. DP is baiting us with "help the nice woman you helped before", but now it's just an unnecessary risk.
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    Well, that can be compartmentalized into two notes: "Have bleeding heart" or "Loot people-shiny".

    There's a metric for this shit, you know?
     
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